Much of our journey today wound around cliffs of red sandstone as the canal clung to the side of the wooded valley, as a result of this at one point it almost completed a complete circle as it negotiated a huge outcrop. There were two tunnels, albeit quite short, and at Kinver (where our cratch cover was made) we stopped for lunch and walked, rather further than we anticipated, to see some Rock Houses carved out of the sandstone which had been inhabited until the 1960s but now maintained by the National Trust.
At Hyde Lock we were delighted to see that the lock house has garden gates copying the design of the lockgates. We ended our day’s travel at the curiously named Stewponey Wharf, which was named after the local pub (now sadly demolished and replaced with flats) which it is said was named by the first landlord after the port of Estepona in Spain on his return from the Peninsula War (1808-14) and later corrupted into Stewponey.
At the lock, with it’s splendid circular weir, I met an elderly Black Country boater who was a mine of information about the area, once managed to understand each other’s accents!